E-cigarette study’s press release damaging to health

A leading US health expert has said that the most striking finding of a recent study, that e-cigarette aerosol had much lower cytotoxicity than did tobacco smoke, was hidden from the readers of a journal in which the study was published, the media and the public.

Writing on his blog, Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, said he believed it was irresponsible for researchers to communicate the results of their study in such a way that it led to a raft of headlines declaring that electronic cigarettes were no safer than were tobacco cigarettes.

An article in the January 2016 issue of the journal Oral Oncology (http://www.oraloncology.com/article/S1368-8375%2815%2900362-0/pdf) reported the results of a laboratory study of the effect on epithelial cell cultures of exposure to tobacco smoke and to e-cigarette vapor.

‘I believe it is irresponsible for the researchers who communicated the results of this study to misrepresent its implications by not only suggesting that it demonstrates clinical toxicity and carcinogenicity of vaping, but by bringing the deception to another level by stating that vaping is no better than smoking real cigarettes,’ Siegel wrote. ‘Neither of these claims is supported by the evidence from this study or other studies.’

Siegel went further by saying that the way in which the study’s results had been communicated would cause damage to human health. ‘As I was quoted in an article about this story in the Daily Caller: “To declare that smoking is no more hazardous than using e-cigarettes, a non-tobacco-containing product is a false and irresponsible claim,’ he wrote. ‘Not only is this conclusion baseless, but it is damaging to the public’s health. It undermines decades of public education about the severe hazards of cigarette smoking. This will cause actual human health damage, not merely damage to some cells in a laboratory culture.”’

Siegel’s blog is at: http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/.